The Potluck Club—Takes the Cake (14 page)
Especially when he heard the reporter say the word
fiancée
when talking about Donna’s relationship to Harris. “Oh, come on, now,” Clay said, scooting himself up to the edge of the sofa. But when Wade suddenly showed up on the screen, he felt his eyes narrow and his cheeks grow warm.
“What’s wrong?” Britney said, nudging his shoulder with her own. “Do you know that guy?”
Clay nodded. “Oh, yeah. I know him. Known him my whole
life.”
“Do you know her too? David Harris’s fiancée?”
Clay swallowed hard. “They’re not engaged” was all he could
say.
Britney looked from him to the screen and back to him again. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she said. “Looks like he’s a man
who knows what he wants.”
Clay could only nod. He cracked his knuckles on both hands then stood and looked down at the pretty blonde before him. “You ready to go?” he asked. “I think I’ve seen enough here.”
Goldie
I stood at the window of the cabin and stared out, not that I was actually looking at anything. Everything was the color of night. Not a star in the sky. No moon overhead. Certainly no streetlights. They’d gone out the same time as the electricity. But the snow was falling so hard it was driving itself sideways, white against the blueblack of the sky.
Behind me, Jack was tinkering with the battery-operated radio Pastor Kevin kept here for emergencies such as these. He sat hunched over the small dinette table in the combination living room/dining room, turning the dial this way and that, studying it all the while in the beam of the flashlight he’d found on the kitchen counter just after we’d come in.
But all he got was static.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t understand why my cell phone battery went dead so fast. If I had
that
I could at least call someone and find out when they expect the electricity to come back on.”
I turned from the window and moved toward him. “I’ll start looking for candles.”
“Good idea,” he said, not looking up at me.
I shivered. “It’s getting pretty cold. Don’t you think you ought to go ahead and start the fire?”
He sighed heavily. “I left the firewood in the car. Let me make
my way out there.”
As mad as I was at the man, I didn’t want him swept away in the
snow. “It’s snowing pretty hard out there, Jack.”
Jack stood and adjusted his belt around his waist. “I’m an athlete. I can handle it.”
I scoffed. “You’re a coach and an overweight one at that.”
He turned toward me—I was now standing at the edge of the kitchen countertop—and barked, “So what are you saying, Goldie? You don’t think I can go out there and get the firewood? Don’t think I can protect my wife?”
My eyes widened. I remembered how vociferous Jack could get.
Oh, Lord. If the man only knew the truth, that I’d called Time of Day
in Japan and that’s why his phone is dead. Goldie, what were you
thinking?
“I didn’t say that,” I said, trying to remain calm. “But I certainly don’t want anything to happen to you. You are, as you just
pointed out, my husband.”
Jack scanned the room with the light from the flashlight. “Let’s see if we can find some rope,” he said. “I’ll tie one end to my waist and the other to the front door.”
“There’s a utility room just off the back of the kitchen,” I said. “Washer and dryer back there. Maybe there’s some rope too.”
Jack moved purposefully toward the back door, leaving me to stand in the darkness. Still, I followed behind him, shuffling my feet so as not to fall over anything, lest there be something on the floor I’d not noted previously.
Inside the utility room, Jack rambled through boxes and the few cabinets inside while the wind whipped outside in fury. I felt my insides begin to quiver, fear taking over, though I didn’t know why. It was, after all, just a power outage.
Jack reached his hand inside one of the cabinets. “Here we go,” he said, pulling rope from within. He pushed past me and nearly stomped toward the front door, once again leaving me alone in the dark. “Get my coat, will you, Goldie? I’ll go ahead and start tying this around my waist.”
I shook my head. “I’m in the dark here, Jack.” A light hit me
squarely in the face, and I squinted. “Jack!”
“Well, come on,” he said as though the whole situation were my fault.
I ground my back teeth in an effort to keep from blowing up. I pulled my arm up to shield the light from my eyes, then walked into the living room, where we’d dumped our coats before the power outage.
I retrieved his coat while he worked near the front door to tie off the rope. When I reached him, he’d gotten both ends tied off and was holding out his arms so I could slide the coat over them. “Just be careful,” I said.
Jack sighed. “Look, Goldie,” he said, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t mean to be cross with you. But this isn’t going exactly as I planned.”
I stepped back, and his hand dropped from my shoulder to his side. “I know” was all I could say.
I stood in the open doorway and watched as my husband pulled the jacket hood on, then plowed—head first—toward where we’d parked the car, which was all but buried by the blinding snow. “Jack!” I called out, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. I watched the glow from the flashlight fade, swallowed up by the snowstorm. “Jack!” I yelled again. Still no answer. I stared at the line of rope as it pulled taut; then I wrapped my hand around it and tugged. It didn’t give, not a bit. “Jack!” I screamed again.
Oh, Lord. Don’t let
him die. I need him here long enough to... beat him up for getting
Charlene Hopefield pregnant. And to take care of me.
I will admit, my prayers made no sense, not even to me.
The rope began to go slack in my hand; he was returning. Little by little the bouncing of light came toward me until a clear vision of my husband emerged, completely covered in snow, shivering in
the frigid air, his arms wrapped around a bundle of wood.
“It’s not very much, is it?” I asked as he dropped it near the front door.
He shot me a hard look. “When the lights come back on, I can go get more.”
Minutes later Jack worked at building a fire while I lit the candles I’d found in one of the kitchen cabinets. The scent of warm vanilla
filled the room.
I went to the table and began to fiddle with the radio.
“Tonight
...”
I caught the word, but it was replaced by more static. Jack turned toward me. “Keep doing that,” he said. “Whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it.”
I wiggled the knob back and forth.
“... with a wind chill of...”
More static. I shifted closer to the table, as if my nearness would help.
“... Jade Pass...”
More static.
“... not expected for some
time...”
“What did they say about Jade Pass?” Jack stood at the fireplace now, which roared with light and heat.
“That’s all I could catch.”
Jack walked over, took the controls from my fingertips.
“One
of the biggest avalanches to hit this area in more than fifty years,”
the reporter was saying before the static took over again.
I stood, grabbed Jack’s shirtsleeve, and tugged.
“Avalanche?” I whispered. “Do you think there was an avalanche at Jade Pass? Was that the rumbling we heard earlier?”
Jack walked over to the window and stared out, leaving me to sit again. “Had to have been. I thought it was trucks from the highway, but... I cannot believe this,” he said. “We’re stuck here.”
I felt my heart turn to bubblegum.
Jack began to get hungry. He’d gone out twice more to get two additional armloads of wood, using the same method as before. I’d stopped hollering his name after him, though. For the most part he’d just sat in front of the radio, still trying to get some news, barking at what little bit he managed to obtain. Clearly, we were in a rustic mountain cabin without electricity, behind a wall of snow, which was piling higher and higher around the cabin due to the snowdrifts. By morning we wouldn’t be able to get out of the front door.
I stayed on the sofa and read by the light of the fire, keeping my distance.
But around eleven, he walked over to the refrigerator and began to poke around. “What is this?” I heard him ask.
“What is what?”
“Is this hamburger quiche?”
“It is.” I didn’t bother to move.
“Why do we have that mess? You know I hate that stuff. Where’s the Mexican casserole I told you I was looking forward to having?” I listened—completely still—as the refrigerator door slammed shut and he stomped toward the living room area. “I’m starving here, Goldie.”
“I clearly remember you saying to me once that real men wouldn’t eat hamburger quiche unless they were under threat of starvation,” I said, not so much as raising my chin to look at him.
“And your point?”
Now I cast him a sideward glance. “My point is: you say you’re
starving. Let’s put your theory to the test, shall we?”
He took another step toward me. “Do you mean to tell me that
knowing I hate that stuff, you brought it anyway?”
I just smiled at him. “I happen to like it. This is
my
vacation too, isn’t it?”
Jack just turned and headed back to the kitchen. I held my breath as the refrigerator door opened again, then closed. The sound of the casserole dish being set on the countertop and the aluminum foil being peeled away reached me before another stomping of the feet toward where I sat. “You do know it’s cold, don’t you?”
“If you keep opening and closing that fridge door it won’t be for long. We may want to see about putting some of the perishables in the snow just outside the door.” I kept my tone very matter-of-fact.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack shake his fist, though I knew he wasn’t about to hit me. Jack had never sunk that low.
Low
but not that low.
“Will you put some on a plate for me too?” I asked sweetly. “Oh, and I also brought some homemade sweet tea.”
“Well, at least you brought that,” he said, turning again.
“Oh, you know what?” I called after him. “I forgot; I didn’t bring tea. I brought Coke instead.”
“I hate Coke,” he barked. “You know I’m a Pepsi man.”
“Oh, dear. It’s been so long, I guess I forgot.”
Jack stomped back in again. “You did this on purpose. You never once intended to try to make our relationship work, did you? You just intended to come up here and torture me.”
I stood to attention. “You’d better believe I did.”
“But why?” he asked, spreading his arms wide. “Am I not doing enough to make up for everything, Goldie? You have to kill me with food poisoning too?”
“Food poisoning?” I let my shoulders sink a bit. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I oughta...”
I placed my hands firmly on my hips. The fire crackled and popped as I spread my legs in my best defensive stance. I almost laughed at the thought of what I must look like. Wonder Goldie! “You oughta what? Are we back to playing
that
game again? You,
the woolly-bully husband? Me, the dutiful, pitiful wife?”
The next thing I knew Jack had grabbed me, wrapped his arm around my waist, and pulled me down onto the floor, where a thick bearskin rug was spread romantically in wait. “Jack!” I shrieked, kicking my feet and pushing against the solidness of his shoulders. “Get off me! Get off of me!”
But Jack pinned my shoulders to the floor with the palms of his hands and smiled down at me in the same way he smiled at me all those years ago when we’d first met. For a moment I
almost
forgot all about Charlene Hopefield.
I wiggled again, trying to free myself. “Get off!”
Jack bent down and kissed me, a wet sloppy kiss, the kind he knows I can’t stand. I turned my head away from him.
“I’ll have you arrested, Jack Dippel.”
“Arrested?” He laughed.
“I will!”
“For what? Loving on my wife?”
I took a deep breath and bolted as hard as I could, freeing myself from him, leaving him to fall on his face. In spite of my fury I burst out laughing. It was truly a funny sight; this grown ox of a man flat on his stomach as though he’d fallen from a thousand feet. Jack looked at me and began to laugh too, rolling over onto his back and spreading his arms wide. “Ah, Goldie,” he said, and for a moment I saw the young man I’d fallen in love with. “You got me. If I know you, you’ve probably got some deal with God going. That’s why the avalanche. You’re gonna watch me starve to death for all my sins against you.” His breathing was heavy and irregular, and for a
moment I wondered if he were going to have a heart attack.
I stood over him, torn between dropping to my knees and wrapping my arms around him, and kicking him in the ribs.
Don’t do
it, Goldie,
a voice inside said.
Don’t fall for his cuteness, no matter
what. He may be your husband, but he’s still the jerk who impregnated
Charlene Hopefield.
A mental picture of her standing in my living
room swooped in between us. I took a step backward.